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  • From: <clearviewfarm AT bluefrog.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Potato Planting Suggestions
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:51:24 -0700

Those of you who mulch your potatoes, do you use a mechanical potato digger?
Does the mulch, particularly round bale mulch, interfere with the digger at
all? Or is it decomposed enough to fall through the digger chain?

Kurt Forman
Clearview Farm
Palmyra, NY 14522

--- organic87 AT frontiernet.net wrote:

From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Potato Planting Suggestions
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:25:33 -0400


On Jun 23, 2010, at 12:02 PM, Todd Lister wrote:

> Why would you grow potatoes w/o mulch.
> Todd lister

Because mulching potatoes takes time when we haven't got it, and straw
which we need to buy, and we've found we can get good crops without
it. And the organic matter is provided by the following cover crop.

I used to mulch the potatoes with straw after the second hilling, but
one year we just couldn't find the time and it didn't get done. The
crop was fine. So now we don't bother.

With our level of weed pressure, to use just mulch without cultivating
and hilling would take a *lot* of mulch. Hilling goes pretty fast (we
do small scale potatoes and do this with the Troybuilt with hiller/
furrower attachment) and clobbers the weeds quite thoroughly.

We used to have potato beetles, with or without the mulch. Now we have
very few; I think the Asian ladybeetles (which didn't use to be around
here) are eating the potato beetles. Something seems to be, anyway.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



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